| Description |
1 online resource |
| Contents |
Introduction: righting the past -- Claiming Neda -- Human rights, humanitarianism, and empathic witnessing: prison memoirs -- Feeling nostalgic, feeling guilty: remembering Iran in documentary film -- Repetitions of the past: Marjane Satrapi and intergenerational memory -- Revolution, nostalgia, and memory in diasporic Iranian memoirs -- Conclusion: testimonial life narratives: anonymity and visibility |
| Summary |
Women Write Iran is the first full-length study on life narratives by Iranian women in the diaspora. Nima Naghibi investigates narratives across genres (including memoirs, documentary films, prison testimonials, and graphic novels) and finds that they are tied together by the experience of the 1979 Iranian revolution as a traumatic event and by a powerful nostalgia for an idealized past. Interested in writing as both an expression of memory and an assertion of human rights, Naghibi discovers that writing life narratives contributes to the larger enterprise of righting historical injustices. By drawing on the empathy of the reader/spectator/witness, Naghibi contends, life narratives offer possibilities of connecting to others and responding with a commitment to social justice. Throughout the book, the focus is on works that have become popular in the West, such as Marjane Satrapi's best-selling graphic novel Persepolis. Naghibi addresses the significant questions raised by these works: How do we engage with human rights and social justice as readers in the West? How do these narratives draw our attention and elicit our empathic reactions? And what is our responsibility as witnesses to trauma, atrocity, and human suffering? |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references and index |
| Notes |
Print version record |
| Subject |
American prose literature -- Iranian American authors -- History and criticism
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Iranian Americans -- Biography -- History and criticism
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Exiles' writings, Iranian -- History and criticism
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Autobiography.
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Autobiographical memory in literature.
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Nostalgia in literature.
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Human rights -- Iran
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autobiography (genre)
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General.
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LITERARY CRITICISM -- Middle Eastern.
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American prose literature -- Iranian American authors.
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Autobiographical memory in literature.
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Autobiography.
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Exiles' writings, Iranian.
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Human rights.
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Nostalgia in literature.
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Iran.
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Iran.
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| Genre/Form |
Criticism, interpretation, etc.
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| Form |
Electronic book
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| ISBN |
9781452950044 |
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1452950040 |
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